he texts me a photograph of the bear scat he found under the chokecherry bush which is bent to the ground stripped on one side of all its red berries but a black bear in our civilized back yard does it mean drought in the foothills does it mean boredom and the need for adventure does it mean the smell of those little red berries can travel for miles or does it mean apocalypse who can say perhaps it means we aren’t alone here perhaps it means we need to clear the vines from the … Continue reading My Husband Texting by Maureen Clark →
Quincy Gray McMichael has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest As I stretch my shoulders, arms aloft, the Monongahela Forest yawns through a narrow split in the trees. Across the road from where I sit, the tranquil understory draws my eye past the weathered porch railing, my ever-growing grass, baby blueberries, high-tensile farm fence, and the last lilac bush. I spot a fiery flash among the scrub and shadows, a thin flag of tabby-tail above the green. Shredder, the orange cat, shoots from the underbrush and across the gravel—a one-lane road … Continue reading Cicadian Rhythm by Quincy Gray McMichael →
When the ceramic tile shattered, I was ashamed I hadn’t cared better for this piece of art created by a friend, one part of a quadriptych. All I saw was the void beneath two nail holes in my bathroom wall, beauty of the other three tiles lessened by more than a mere fourth. When I swept the floor and gathered shards on a plastic plate, I was reminded that all vanity is temporary. We consist of borrowed parts, atoms born in distant stars that comprised a billion things before becoming us. Who was I to … Continue reading Becoming by Bill Glose →
Watercolors came naturally to artist James Ellis. “The summer I finished elementary school I discovered my mom was taking a watercolor painting class,” he remembers. “I watched her arrange her palette and paints, ready her favorite brushes, set up a tiny watercolor board on a tiny easel, and then paint that morning’s model, a small white vase decorated with a blue printed illustration of a Chinese farmer. The vase held a few black-eyed Susans. My mom worked quickly, and in less than an hour she produced an exquisite rendering. My mom had suddenly transformed … Continue reading Watercolors and Drawings by James Ellis →
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